Anchors

1. Summer Skin

I lay beneath him, inhaling his intoxicating aroma like it was the only thing to sustain me. He shifted slightly, and I noticed the gold comforter had graced our shoulders, enveloping us in a warm cocoon.

Clothes were made scarce, and soon we were unstoppable.

“I didn’t know you were so interested in anatomy, Bella.” His voice vibrated sweetly in my ear as he approached me. The velvetiness of it all drug me away from my daydream that his and Carlisle’s textbooks had directed me to.

“I got a little bored waiting for you. They seem entertaining; I didn’t know it took so many muscles to smile.” I replied, shutting the old book softly. My eyes fluttered back to his freshly topaz ones, which sparkled at my curiosity.

“Bella that book is terribly outdated. That’s from my first time at medical school, Harvard. It was in the early nineteen-forties.” I gaped at him as he took the book and looked at it nostalgically. He had written notes in the margins – mnemonics, jokes, anything to help him remember.

He laughed at a forgotten mnemonic. “I prefer my asparagus toasted. Obviously that one worked. You definitely wouldn’t need it.” He remarked, flipping to a page in the tattered book.

“Wait, what is ‘I prefer my asparagus toasted’?” I had never heard of that one, odd, but easy to memorize. I smiled; it was a very “Edward” phrase. Nowadays, the mnemonics for anatomy were normally just dirty jokes that always had made me blush during biology tests.

“You honestly can’t think of anything that fits it?” I shook my head no. He smirked, and said simply, as if it were as easy as singing the ABCs, “interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase. Cell duplication. First lab we did together in biology…” He hinted, and I finally remembered.

With a smile I replied quietly, “yeah, the day I totally spilled my entire life story to you.” I sighed at the memory, he had been so curious about my life. Little did I know at the time he had just wanted to see why he couldn’t read my mind.

“Do you want to learn anatomy?” He asked abruptly, shaking me from reliving the first few weeks of our relationship.

“Huh? Oh... Sure.” My voice questioned his intentions until I saw him flash me a smile that showed only half his teeth. His freshly fed eyes had a pale glow to them that alluded to mischief, and made my mind reel with every step he took towards me. In a blur, he had me laying down on his plush bed, anatomy texts forgotten across the room. “No books?” I said, calling him out on whatever non-educational intentions he had.

“I’ve been through medical school twice – Ivy both time, I hope I don’t need any of those.” And with that he was over me, ravishing my face and neck with feather-light kisses. His cool lips danced across my skin, leaving my skin with the sensation of pins and needles. My breath came out in a hiss as his lips went lower, kissing the row of buttons on the Oxford shirt I was wearing. He kissed the skin that was exposed between my shirt hem and my pants, making me gasp as the sensitive skin was acknowledged.

“Anatomy…” I breathed, trying to gain some control over the situation. He laughed lightly and his cool breath tickled the skin on my lower abdomen. My chest heaved, finally taking a full breath to inhale his dreamy scent, when he stopped his ministrations and climbed back up my body so that we were face to face with each other. Lightly, he traced the sides of my face, starting with my forehead, ending with my chin.

“To Zanzibar by motor car.” He whispered into my ear. His lips tickled the knob of my ear, and I felt his sharp teeth lightly graze it as well.

“Why would you drive to Zanzibar, Edward? It’s an island you – ” I was cut off by his lips on mine, silencing me. It was another mnemonic, I realized, back to anatomy.

“Temporal,” he said, pausing over my temple and kissing me there. He let his fingers trace the path that I assumed was the branch that controlled the muscles beneath. “This is the one that you use when you’re angry with me, when you furrow your eyebrow.”

“Zygomatic,” he said, lowering himself again toward my temple, but this time he traced a line under my eye and toward the bridge of my nose. “Whenever you would sleep, this is the one that kept your lovely eyes closed and dreaming of inexplicable things.” He grinned at my expense, and I glanced down, embarrassed.

“Buccal,” again he moved his face towards mine, this time moving further down the side of my face, as he planted a kiss on the edge of my cheek bone. “And when you laugh, smile, or even smirk at me, this is the lovely nerve that ignites that reaction.” I smiled at him, emphasizing the upward pull.

“Mandibular,” a kiss was placed on my chin. “For every pout that has won me over…”

“Finally, cervical.” He frowned before he kissed me low on my jaw. “This one is responsible for every frown. Although, I can be held accountable for many of them as well…” He said solemnly. He knelt next to me and held my hand in his, pressing the crescent shaped scar to his lips. His eyes caught mine, and begged me silently. I nodded slightly; this was our way of healing. We would comfort each other silently; words were too easy to interpret. Vagueness meant that only we could truly understand what was going on.

He moved to lie next to me “I think that’s enough anatomy for now,” he said quietly. He ran a finger down my arm, tracing the light pink lines that ran down my shirt. I mimicked him by deftly unbuttoning his white shirt and letting a hand rest on his abdomen.

Our eyes never separated as we continued tracing each other, remembering how our contrasting temperatures used to feel.